Trail of the Lion King

Time for our first football game. Or rather the first football game of this visit to South Africa. I’d been here before for the 2010 World Cup and it was that trip that had me thinking that I’d be happy to live here someday. Three years on, here we are.

It’s fairly hot in South Africa at this time of year, although it’s prone to thunderstorms late in the afternoon and so to get the most out of the day we got up early and were hiking at Groenkloof Nature Reserve by 7am.

We did about ten miles along the various trails, getting up close to zebras in particular. We’d seen a couple of giraffes there the previous week but couldn’t find them this time.

You know what zebras look like, so here’s a Guinea Fowl instead.

Hiking done we set off for the Lucas Moripe stadium in Atteridgeville where Supersport United play their home games. It’s a township on the edge of Pretoria with a lot of single storey houses with corrugated iron roofs. A quick check on Wikipedia suggests that only 0.2% of the population are white. That tallies with what we saw as we drove towards the stadium and was a bit of an about turn from the rugby match crowd the previous week.

I hadn’t been able to pre-book parking but talked my way into the Media Car park with the help of a fifty rand note. Just as I was getting out of the car I got a call from the Security Manager at work. The cars are fitted with trackers and he gets an alert whenever anyone goes anywhere considered dangerous. I was able to reassure him by confirming that nobody had tried to murder us so far and that we would be out of there before it got dark.

Incidentally, we have two panic buttons in the car in case we, well, panic I suppose. One under the steering wheel and the other in the boot for those occasions when you accidentally fall in whilst loading your shopping.

I can’t remember exactly how much the tickets cost, but I think they were around forty rand. The Lucas Moripe Stadium is a twenty nine thousand capacity bowl with a running track and one covered stand. There’s a nice view of a hillside where rocks have been strategically placed to spell out support for the ANC.

The Lucas Moripe Stadium.

Supersport United and Moroka Swallows are both in the top tier Premier Soccer League, but this game was a quarter final of the Telekom Cup. There weren’t many chances early on despite the best efforts of one of the away defenders who seemed determined to set the opposition up. He waved an arm in the air in apology more times in the opening half hour than Curtis Fleming would have done in a month.

Nobody capitalised on the errors though and the teams went off goalless at half time. I got myself some chicken and pap from a stall on the opposite side of the ground. Pap is like mash, but made from maize. I can’t see it catching on in the UK.

The chicken was good though.

People were still coming in as the second half started, but I doubt the total attendance was more than a thousand. The home fans who weren’t sat up in the main stand were grouped together on the opposite side doing that African bobbing up and down from one foot to the other dancing, a bit like ten year old boys at a school disco or middle aged men at a Specials concert.

They had a few brass instruments to accompany them and didn’t seem to be to be at all bothered by whatever was happening on the pitch.

Supersport fans.

There was a smaller group of Swallows fans just to the left of the home support and they were making just as much noise. There was no animosity between the two groups and none of the singing or chanting appeared to be aimed at the opposing supporters. Mind you, none of it seemed aimed at the pitch either, it just looked to be a bunch of people who had gone out for a sing and a dance and by chance happened to be doing it near a football pitch.

Swallows fans.

An opening goal on the hour from Supersport was quickly cancelled out by the visitors. A series of good saves from the Swallows keeper then took the game into extra-time. I wasn’t too pleased with that as the rain looked imminent and I had been hoping to be back in the car before it started.

Substitute Phulo Thala put the home side back in front just before the end of the first period of extra-time and his team mate George Maluleka then added another soon after the re-start to clinch the semi-final spot for Supersport.

That was enough for us and we cleared off early in an attempt to avoid the rain and the murdering.

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This one turned out to be my last English football match of 2013. Or at least the last non-Boro match as I was able to squeeze in the home game against Bournemouth and an away trip to Nottingham before Jen and I left for a new job in South Africa.

I don’t write about the Boro games though so you’ll just have to imagine the joy of throwing away a two goal lead against Forest and then dropping another two points to a late equaliser in the Bournemouth match.

I did get to stand all game though.

The visit to Stotfold was brought about by the need to drop off visa applications at the South African Consulate. As you might know, it’s actually in London, but I thought that staying outside of the city and just getting the train in for the day might be more enjoyable.

We booked into somewhere in a village called Great Offley. It was quite posh by our standards but it had a footpath passing through the grounds of the hotel that allowed us to go for a hike. We’ve spent a lot of time walking this summer and probably the thing that sticks in my mind the most is the number of game birds that we’ve disturbed. There didn’t seem to be a hedgerow in England or Scotland that wasn’t full of grouse, partridge or pheasant. Or at least there wasn’t until we walked past and scattered them each time.

These two tried running away.

Stotfold isn‘t too far from Great Offley and when I spotted that their football team was at home to Hadley in a Level Nine Spartan South Midlands League Premier Division clash, I had a drive down to their Roker Park ground. Yes, Roker Park. You thought it had long gone didn’t you?

Despite its famous name Roker Park wasn’t the easiest place to find, even with a sat nav in the car and that blue dot thing on my phone. Eventually I spotted a sign on a gatepost and parked up nearby.

It’s hidden down that lane.

It was six quid to get in, the same as the pre-season friendly that I’d seen recently in Sudbury. That must be the going rate these days. The woman on the gate sold me a programme for a quid as well, just in case I needed the contact information for a variety of local tradesmen.

She wasn’t too happy to be photographed.

There weren’t too many people there, maybe a hundred or so. That seems fairly constant at this level too. Most of them were dotted around the Bill Clegg Stand. As you might have guessed I’ve no idea who Bill is. He does sound a bit northern though so I’m sure he’s a decent bloke.

The Foggy and Compo stands will be next.

The highlight of the evening was being served a cup of tea in a ceramic mug at half-time. I don’t normally drink tea, but on this occasion it felt like the right thing to do. Drinking it out of a proper cup that you were obliged to return when you’d finished made it all a lot friendlier. I don’t know why, but it just did. Homely even. Perhaps it’s the trust. There should be more of that sort of thing, although if I were doing the washing up I might think differently.

The tea hut.

As for the game and the score, I can’t remember. I think it might have been one-nil, but I’ve no idea who to. Maybe I should write these things a bit sooner after the event.

I’m not sure if I’d been to Croatia before this trip. I went to Yugoslavia in the mid-eighties and I’ve a feeling that I might well have stayed briefly in one or more of the towns along that coast opposite Italy but I’ve no idea really. Not that it matters, it was just that some of the names and sights seemed somewhat familiar. From what I do remember, Yugoslavia wasn’t much cop in those days. The beer tasted like Ribena and the bars closed around nine in the evening. That’s not what you want when you are twenty and so on that occasion we didn’t hang around.

These days I appreciate the quiet life, even if I’m still not too enthusiastic about Ribena flavoured beer and so Jen and I were happy to stay in the countryside near Porec. As old people tend to do we had a look at some of the towns nearby such as Pula and Rovinj. One of them had a big Roman building.

Some culture for you.

We even managed a day trip across to Venice, somewhere else I hadn’t been since the mid-eighties. It seemed a lot busier than I remembered it. Isn’t everywhere though?

There’s also a hiking trail in the area, Saint Simeon’s Way, and we walked a section of that on what felt like it might have been the hottest day of the year. Ideal for a fruit based drink I’d say. Maybe it all makes sense after all.

It’s a picturesque part of the world.

The good news is that the Croatian football season starts early and there was a game taking place at Rijeka, around eighty kilometres away from our apartment. We had to drive through a mountain range, a job made easier by the bloody big tunnel that went five kilometres through the hillside.

Stadion Kantrida

Rijeka has a ten thousand capacity stadium by the seaside. Handy really, as at thirty-five degrees it allowed fans the option of cooling down at the beach before the game. They’ve also got a sort of Braga-lite cliff down one side of a stadium. The only bad point is the running track that encircles the pitch.

The area around the ground was busy when we arrived and the home sections had already sold out. Fortunately we were able to pick up tickets for the Dynamo end for forty Kuna each. That‘s about five quid. As we went in we were searched by a copper who, on discovering that we weren’t concealing any weapons, advised us not to go into the away section.

“Bad, bad, bad” was his description of the visiting fans and he guided us toward the sold-out home section nearby instead.

I doubt these fellas issue many Section 27 Notices.

Safe as our new seats were, I’d have prefered something with a little shade. There were a few blokes with the right idea behind the opposite goal. They had somehow managed to nab seats in a bar that overlooked the pitch. That’s my type of terrace.

View from behind the goal as the sun went down.

Midway through the first half the game stopped for a water break. I wonder how long it will be before this becomes compulsory regardless of the heat. I find it hard to believe that the television companies and, as the money trickles down, the clubs and ultimately the players, are prepared to forgo that extra minute of advertising revenue. When the World Cup gets to Qatar I’d expect two breaks per half, probably of two minutes each.

On a less cynical note I was pleased to see bottles of water handed to the away fans. They didn’t have access to a drinks kiosk and  I imagine being “Bad, bad, bad” all day is thirsty work.

Dynamo had most of the attacking play as the half progressed but they weren’t able to make it count and went in at the interval with the game still goalless.

Rijeka fans and their flares.

Rijeka started the second half more positively, but they too weren’t able to take their chances. On the hour, and with the sun just dipping down behind what I think were the Ukla mountains, the home flares came out. An hour. Such patience. I’m the sort of fella that lets the fireworks off on New Years Eve once I’ve had that first can of beer, even if that is at four in the afternoon. Waiting an hour at a football game shows willpower far beyond me.

Bad, bad, bad.

Ten minutes later it was the turn of the away fans. As well as showing even greater patience they had also brought a lot more flares. Whereas the Rijeka fans had been content to hold their pyrotechnics, the Zagreb fans rained them down onto the pitch, or at least the ones who could clear the running track did.

I could now see why we had a fire engine standing by, with around thirty flares burning merrily away around the goalmouth.

Maybe that’s why there is a running track.

That was about it, action wise. The game finished nil–nil and the point consolidated the visitor’s position at the top of the table. As Dynamo had won the league in each of the previous eight seasons I don’t suppose Rijeka could be too disappointed about dropping home points.

In case the flares weren’t enough Rijeka thoughtfully provided post-match firework display for the mile long walk back to the car.

With plenty of time off between jobs, Jen and I were taking the opportunity to get to a few gigs. We‘d spotted that Boo Hewerdine was playing in a castle and so we thought we’d have to add that one to the list. This particular castle was Castle Hedingham, a Norman motte and bailey castle down in Essex but as we were homeless at the time it was no big deal to head south for a couple of nights. You’ve got to be somewhere.

The closest place to the venue that we could find somewhere to stay was in Sudbury. It’s exactly how I‘d imagined a countryside village in the south of England to be, complete with an old church and a village green. So, a bit like Norton then but without the duck pond.

They have their own Saint though, which Norton doesn’t. Even better, a Saint with a hiking trail and so we walked the section of St. Edmund’s Way that connects Sudbury with Laverham. It’s a picturesque route, as you might imagine, but not the best marked trail that we’ve hiked and we ended up lost a couple of times, culminating in us walking slightly further than we’d thought we would have been.

I don’t think this was the right way.

We’d previously seen Boo Hewerdine a couple of months earlier at Matlock Bath where I’d given him some post-gig advice which consisted mainly of how much better life would be if he played the songs that I like best. He was far more gracious about it than he needed to be, even signing a CD with the dedication ‘Sorry about everything’.

The Castle Hedingham gig was, as expected, very good and as I wasn’t drinking Boo escaped my wrath afterwards for not playing Geography for the third consecutive gig of his that we’d been to.

Cool venue.

This is a sporting blog though and so that’s enough of the music talk and on to the game. I don’t usually write about English games, partly because I don’t get to many these days, but mainly because when I do it’s a Boro game and I’m too bothered about the score to get caught up in all this blogging nonsense.

This one wasn’t the Boro though, so I took a few photos and notes. You don’t think I remember all the detail do you? Particularly when it takes me five months to get around to posting it. Anyway, AFC Sudbury of the Isthmian League Division One North were taking on Fakenham Town of the Eastern Counties League Division One at Sudbury’s King’s Marsh Stadium.

I was a little surprised that we were being charged anything at all to get in to a pre-season friendly between a team at the eighth level of English football and one at level ten. I was even more surprised to find out that the tickets were six quid each. I dunno, maybe I’m turning into one of those old blokes who thinks a pint of milk still costs one and six.

This is where you go in.

Mind you, nobody else seemed to be paying. Perhaps they were all club officials or player’s wives. We coughed up for raffle tickets too, despite the bloke selling them warning us that we wouldn’t win as the prizes were already destined for people on the committee.

The high admission charges and raffle sales must have been working out ok though, as there was a fairly impressive newish looking main stand, complete with a bar inside complementing the adjoining tea hut.

There was also a bus shelter type stand behind each goal and another stand, named The Shed on the opposite side of the pitch. It did all seem a bit excessive for a crowd that probably didn’t quite total a hundred people, but I suppose a pre-season friendly against Fakenham Town isn’t likely to bring out all the part-timers.

The clubhouse and tea hut.

It wasn’t much of a game, although I suppose I should know by now not to expect much from pre-season friendlies. Everyone seemed exhausted after the first ten minutes running around and the game continued at a much slower tempo.

Fakenham had a grizzled old bloke in the centre of their defence. He did pretty well to get his head to most of the balls played in towards him. I got the impression that he’d probably open doors with his forehead too if given the opportunity. Sudbury’s notable player was a young kid on the left wing who looked about twelve years old. The highlight of the first half was seeing him stamp his feet in frustration after one of the bigger boys didn’t pass to him.

A rare action shot.

Sudbury managed to score three first half goals, all from or after headers where nobody saw fit to mark or challenge the scorer. Fakenham replied with a consolation from a fella who chased a long ball and just beat the advancing keeper to it.

We stuck around until half-time and upon learning that, as expected, we hadn’t won the raffle, we cleared off back into town for something to eat. Apparently Sudbury scored a fourth goal after the break.

Saturday’s game was a first division fixture at Grindavik. Iceland, like so many other countries, doesn’t name its leagues properly though and so the first division is actually the second tier. Grindavik is about forty minutes drive from Reykjavik and arguably more famous for the Blue Lagoon thermal lake than its football team. It wouldn‘t be much of an argument either.

I read somewhere that eighty percent of visitors to Iceland visit the Blue Lagoon. Perhaps I read it in one of their promotional leaflets. I don’t know. It doesn‘t really seem likely to me, but then again I’m not one for going to the baths. It has never seemed fun ever since those visits to Old Stockton Baths as a schoolkid where I’d be drowning and Old Mrs. Hall would be pretending to save me by shouting “Swim, sonny, swim“ and dangling a hoop on a stick just beyond my reach.

Mind you, even if twenty percent of visitors to Iceland forgo a trip to the Blue Lagoon, you can‘t really go to Grindavik and not give it a go. My new pair of thirty quid trunks combined with another thirty quid each entrance fee made it my most expensive trip to the baths ever. On a positive note, neither of us drowned. Apart from that though, I wasn’t overly impressed. For a start, it’s fake. It’s a man-made pool heated by the waste water from the power station next door. Quite why they feel the need to line the pool floor with toe-stubbing rocks is somewhat of a mystery to me. Anyway, we stuck it for an hour and when it became clear that they didn’t have a wave machine we buggered off.

It doesn’t even have a roof.

Grindavik town  was easy enough to find and the football ground easier still. I left Jen in a cafe, paid my 1500 kronar and took a seat amongst the hundred and fifty or so other fans in the main stand. Well, the only stand. Grindavik were in yellow and blue whilst visitors BI were in white with red sleeves.

IB on the attack.

Grindavik had a scottish bloke, Scott Ramsey playing in midfield. He looked older than his team mates and was carrying a bit more weight than them too, but he was the best passer of a ball on the field. I googled him and the most I could find out about his pre- Grindavik career was that he’d once been on Partick Thistle’s books. Twenty minutes in he slipped the ball through to striker Magnús Björgvinsson who calmly slotted it past the BI keeper to post the hosts a goal up.

BI had a Scot in their team too. Well sort of. Former Scotland player Nigel Quashie was strolling around the midfield for them, looking like a bloke who couldn‘t really believe where he had ended up. I’m like that with some jobs too. He started the game as an attacking right-sided midfielder but then switched after half an hour or so to sit in front of the back four. He seemed incapable of passing the ball without also telling his team-mates to ‘“Keep it“. When they moved the ball on they would then repeat the phrase in what seemed like a particularly crap version of Chinese Whispers.

Nigel takes advantage of a quiet moment to fiddle with his balls.

Quashie wasn’t the most noteworthy player on the pitch though. Or even in his own side. How could he be when one of his team mates had turned out for  Norton and Stockton Ancients? BI striker Ben Everson was the man who outshone the former Forest fella. At least in my slightly biased eyes.  A career that had taken him to America via half the Northern League and which had peaked in a League Two spell at York was now continuing in Iceland’s second tier. To be honest, I didn‘t discover the Teesside connection until afterwards or I would have paid a bit more attention as to how he did.

Despite having half a leg missing Ben Everson receives the ball.

The opening goal livened things up a bit and Magnús Björgvinsson almost scored his second soon afterwards. He managed to go around three men before stumbling and then despite being flat out on the floor he still contrived to head the ball against a post. Half man, half seal, I reckon.

The view from the main stand.

As half-time approached, BI equalised when Alexander Þórarinsson headed home from a corner. The goal revealed the presence of a dozen or so away fans mixed in with everyone else. They didn‘t celebrate for long though as a couple of minutes later Stefán Pálsson restored Grindavik’s advantage, beating the keeper from twenty-five yards.

At half-time I went for free cake and coffee in the little club house on the opposite side of the pitch. I suppose it wasn’t too dissimilar from the old 100 Club at Ayresome Park.

It was all very civilised.

Grindavik has an impressive collection of trophies in their tea hut and pennants from big games in their history. So it’s very dissimilar from the old 100 Club at Ayresome Park in that respect. They’ve turned out in Europe a few times, even playing Basel on one occasion apparently. I doubt that they came back from three down though.

Pele has been to their ground too if the photos are to be believed. It wasn’t clear whether he’d been there for something to do with football or whether it was part of his work in raising awareness of erectile dysfunction. I don’t suppose it matters much though unless he suggests a session of ‘keepy uppy’.

The teams return after their coffee and cake.

A few minutes after the re-start BI gave the ball away on the edge of the box leaving their skipper Sigurgeir Gíslason little choice but to bring down the striker and pick up a yellow. Scott Ramsay took the direct free-kick and curled it into the corner to put Grindavik three-one ahead.

Goal.

Ten minutes later and it was groundhog day, only this time Gíslason picked up a straight red. Ramsay repeated his direct free kick over the wall to make it four and with the game won it was then just a question of how many Grindavik would score.

The fifth goal came after Björgvinsson chased a long ball, rounded the keeper and then squared for team mate Pálsson to knock it past the bloke on the line for his second of the game. That was enough to make two away fans near me stomp off in a huff.

Not long from the end Björgvinsson went around the visiting keeper again but this time he was brought down. It seemed an unnecessary foul to me with the score as it was, but maybe the keeper fancied the week off that the red card would give him. With BI now down to nine men and all their subs having been used it was a chance for striker Andri Bjarnason to take the discarded goalie shirt and be a hero.

Another goal.

Or maybe not. The makeshift keeper got nowhere near Björgvinsson‘s penalty and the game finished up as a six-one victory for the home side.

After the game Jen and I did a bit of hiking. There’s a trail linking Grindavik with Volgar that goes past the football stadium before disappearing into the wilds. It’s not too wild as the path is clearly marked with orange posts, but it’s an enjoyable walk over what mainly seems to be lava covered in a deep layer of moss.

It’s all a bit remote.

In some places there was a strong smell of sulphur. I thought that it made the hike ideal for couples on that tricky first or second date when you still feel obliged to discreetly sneak your farts out. We didn‘t have the time or the inclination to walk the full fifteen miles to Volgar, mainly because we had no idea how we would get back to the car afterwards.

In the end we settled for hiking two hours outwards before turning around and heading back to Grindavik. The four hours proved ideal for letting the post-match traffic clear and so we were quickly away for the drive back to Reykjavik.